A major concern for health care professionals, including doctors, physician assistants, nurses, and medical technicians, is their own personal safety while providing medical care to others. Often, these health care professionals are required to perform procedures on patients who have transmittable diseases and pathogens, such as HIV, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, staphylococcus and streptococcus bacteria, as well as others. Surgery, in particular, presents significant risks to doctors and nurses because they must use sharp instruments in confined spaces, with the instruments becoming covered in the patient's own blood, serum, bile, and pus. If a doctor or nurse were to stab or jab themselves with one of these sharp instruments they would be at significant risk of contracting whatever diseases or pathogens the patient was carrying.
One surgical device which is of particular concern, and which presents heightened risks, is a trocar. A trocar is an elongated, highly polished, spear-like instrument that is typically utilized to create stab wounds through a patient's soft tissue. The trocar usually has a tube or drain attached to one end, and a point on the other, so that the pointed end may be inserted into and advanced through the patient's soft tissue in order to create a passageway for the tube, which then acts as a drain for fluids within the body cavity where a surgical procedure is to be performed. A variety of designs for the sharp points on the trocar are available, some with sharp ridges to cut flesh and others with conical pointed ends.
The drain tube is cut from the trocar after the trocar has advanced through the patient's soft tissue to create an opening. The drain tube extends from the body, through the patient's soft tissue, and to a reservoir outside the body to collect fluids. Surgical drain tubes are used in a wide variety of surgical procedures, and are typically made from soft materials such as plastics and rubbers.
Trocars have conventionally been inserted by hand by a doctor or nurse wearing gloves. The trocar is usually inserted into the body cavity, forced through the patient's soft tissue by hand from within the cavity, and then grasped from the outside and advanced the remainder of the way through the tissue until only the hose is extending through the opening in the patient's soft tissue. Because the trocar is highly polished and the environment in which it is used contains various fluids, it is difficult for doctors and nurses to grasp the device to push or pull it through the patient's soft tissue. Furthermore, it is extremely dangerous to grasp the pointed end of the trocar when attempting to advance it through the patient. Difficulties encountered while using the trocar may also be dangerous to the patient because a slip or error while doing so could cause unnecessary harm to the patient. Another concern with trocar devices is their safe disposal after being used. Oftentimes, a trocar is covered in a patient's fluids after being inserted through the patient's soft tissue, and by virtue of its sharp pointed end continues to present a hazard when discarded. If improperly disposed of, trocars will be a danger to anyone who subsequently handles them or comes in contact with them.
Several devices have been developed to assist in the insertion of trocars during surgical procedures. These devices, disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,613,039 and U.S. Patent Application No. 2004/0092891, include a holder mechanism for holding a trocar and a receiving mechanism for receiving the trocar. In use, the holder mechanism is positioned in or adjacent to the internal cavity within the patient and the receiving mechanism is positioned on the exterior of the patient to receive the trocar after it passes through the patient's soft tissue. These devices, while providing some safety advantages, are unnecessarily large and bulky, are awkward to use due to their size and shape, and require cleaning and sanitization between uses to prevent contamination from one patient to another.
Thus, it is believed that there is a need for an economical and easy to use safety device to assist health care professionals in using trocar devices, and other needles, while also protecting them from possible contamination due to pathogens carried by the patient.